The Daily Mail UK
written by John Naish
Sunday April 29, 2012
- Hospital 'lost track' of frail pensioner after she injured her leg in a fall
- She was left in a room and forgotten as son frantically searched for her
- Staff only found her after son threatened to file a missing person report
Frightened and alone, 95-year-old Doris Miller lay on her hospital trolley as hour after hour went by, wondering why no one had come to see her.
The old lady was exhausted and in pain after falling in the shower and hurting her leg. But following the drama of the ambulance dash to A&E, she had been wheeled into an ante-room . . . and parked there, like a piece of left luggage, for 28 hours.
Away from the routine meal-and-tea rounds on the wards, she had been given hardly anything to eat or drink and no proper medical care. She vaguely recalls being given a sandwich or two, but can’t quite remember by whom.
And she simply could not understand why her devoted son Michael had not arrived.
As day turned to night, and night became morning, Mrs Miller became more confused, distressed, and fearful for her safety. She had no way of knowing that Michael, 67, had been frantically searching for her — but East Surrey Hospital in Redhill had completely lost track of where they had put her.
In fact, they managed to locate her only after Mr Miller called the hospital chief executive to say he was phoning the police to report his mother as a missing person.
‘I was furious,’ said Mr Miller. ‘This is what happens when you put too much pressure on a system that doesn’t work.’
An appalling but isolated case? If only it were.
Earlier this month, the College of Emergency Medicine (CEM), which represents A&E doctors, told NHS managers that they should routinely leave patients on hospital trolleys to alleviate overcrowding in casualty units.
A&E departments have become a bottleneck in a NHS that is struggling to cope with reductions in staff and services caused by Government demands for £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2014. All this at a time when A&E attendances at English hospitals have exploded from 12.9 million in 2001 to 20.7 million in 2010.
Some of this is caused by population growth, but much of it is due to GPs radically cutting surgery opening hours and out-of-hours visits, leaving patients with nowhere else to turn.
Casualty units are also severely affected by the continued rise of Britain’s binge-drinking culture following the introduction in 2003 of licensing laws which permitted 24-hour drinking.
Around a third of all A&E attendance and ambulance costs are alcohol-related, according to a report on the impact of drink on the NHS, published in 2009 by the Institute of Alcohol Studies.
The CEM says the demands being placed on A&E units are so great that it has become an unfortunate necessity to ‘board’ patients on trolleys in corridors outside full wards, queuing for beds to become free.
The new guidelines state: ‘Boarding patients in the corridors of the wards where they will be admitted is controversial but supported by the college.’
The college is also recommending that hospitals cancel routine surgery to help clear beds and take the pressure off casualty units.
It warns that casualty staff are now under such great stress that they are at much greater risk of making errors such as failing to prescribe life- saving drugs or spotting early symptoms of crises such as heart attacks.
It also warns of the dangers of patients being left lying in ambulances for hours before space in A&E can be freed to receive them.
The college says that leaving patients on trolleys should be a stop-gap measure only until the NHS modifies its procedures to cope with the ever-growing pressures. But patients such as Mrs Miller are already suffering.
She was taken to East Surrey Hospital at 10am on April 11 last year after the fall at her home in nearby Horley. Her son Michael, who was working in another part of the county, called the hospital as soon as he heard and was first told she was ‘resting’ in A&E.
Hours later, when he checked again, he was told she had been transferred to a care home. ‘I asked which home she was in, but they wouldn’t tell me because of “data protection”,’ he says.
Mr Miller persisted, and an hour later the hospital rang him to say that she had actually been transferred to a ward within the hospital.
‘I rang the ward, but they said they had never heard of her,’ he says. ‘The next morning, I was told she was on another ward, so I checked with that ward, and again they said that they had never heard of her.’
Finally, the hospital admitted they were having trouble locating Doris. ‘It was now 2pm the following day,’ remembers Michael. ‘I rang the chief executive and said that if she were not promptly found I would report her to the police as a missing person.’
Ten minutes later the hospital telephoned to say she had been found in an ante-room at the A&E department, still on her trolley after 28 hours.
‘When I finally saw her, she looked dehydrated, confused and distressed,’ says Michael. ‘She had received no proper care.’
Like many elderly people, Mrs Miller, who now lives in a care home, did not feel able to buttonhole the hard-pressed staff as they bustled past, and she had no buzzer to summon help.
‘I didn’t want to complain but I was in there a long time, and they left me alone for long periods in the corridor,’ she recalls.
The hospital insists Mrs Miller had been properly cared for in A&E, but that it had launched an inquiry into the communication breakdown.
Michael Wilson, chief executive of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, has said of the case: ‘Clearly this is not the experience we want for our patients and I am pleased to say that the vast majority of our patients do receive good to excellent care.’
However, Mr Miller says: ‘They have closed two hospitals round here and East Surrey is caring for half a million people. It is the vulnerable who suffer.’
Vulnerable people such as 74-year-old Paule Ripley, who was admitted to Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth last year with an irregular heartbeat and breathing difficulties.
She arrived in A&E at midday and was wheeled into the medical assessment unit to await admission. There was never any doubt that she needed a hospital bed. Yet 12 hours later she was still there, lying on a trolley, hungry and thirsty.
‘The whole experience was very frightening,’ said Mrs Ripley, of Gosport.
A spokesman for the hospital trust, while refusing to comment on Mrs Ripley’s individual case, said: ‘In the five years to March 2012 we have never failed to meet the national NHS target of a maximum 12-hour wait on a hospital trolley. Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has one of the busiest emergency departments in the country.’
But Mrs Ripley said her experience there was unbearable.
‘It almost killed me,’ she said. ‘The trolley was uncomfortable and I didn’t have the strength to lift myself. No nurses came to see me. The doctor, when he did come, said I should be in a ward, in a bed, immediately. I hoped what happened to me was a one-off, but I fear it’s becoming the norm.’
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